the big question today, whether we'll see a cease-fire brokered by egypt and turkey obviously with the pressure of the u.s. and great britain, or are we going to see that ground invasion by israel? prime minister netanyahu said today they are ready to expand their ground operation. we know egypt and turkey are working feverishly to strike some sort of deal, but the signal, the sounds coming out of jerusalem is they aren't finished with this operation yet, but certainly here in gaza people are hoping that some sort of cease-fire will come about very soon. >> thanks to alex, and now let's bring in abc's global affairs anchor christiane amanpour who joins us from jerusalem. christiane, what is the situation there militarily? are there still fears of a ground war? >> reporter: martha, from the military point of view, they want to just get rid of as much of hamas' rocket-launching capability as possible. i just talked to a senior military official here, an israeli official, who said they seemed to be quite pleased with what they've done so far. in about a thousand sorties, they've taken out